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Gurugram, April 15, 2020:
Help-id.org is a website that is dedicated to helping the elderly people during the COVID-19 pandemic. Designed and launched by Vir Sawhney, a 15-year-old resident of Gurugram, the website is simplistic in its approach to connect volunteers with elderly people who have been left bereft of assistance due to the sudden lockdown. The aim of the website is to provide the elderly people, who register on the website, with help for their grocery shopping, buying medicines, and even household chores, by connecting them to volunteers in their locality. The volunteers must also register on the website and they are assigned to the various tasks requested by the elderly people on the website. The whole operation is run by Vir Sawhney himself, who manages everything from the running of the website and assurance of the completion of tasks.
Talking about his inspiration for the project, he said, “I made this website because there was chaos caused by the spread of COVID-19 and I felt the need to help people who may not be able to help themselves, such as senior citizens. That is why I decided to make Help-ID to try and make people’s lives as easy as I could.”
The website is run in a fairly simplistic manner, as explained by Vir, “The website is designed keeping in mind that all the senior citizens are not well-versed with usage of digital services. Hence, the design has been kept extremely simple. On the home page, there are four icons wherein each icon leads to a different google form, depending on what help the user needs. The options for assistance are help in the purchase of medicinal pills, help in the purchase of groceries, help with basic housekeeping such as gardening or mopping, and help with anything related to the internet such as video calls or problems with the Wi-Fi etc. Once they have entered their response, they will also receive an SMS and an email confirming their request. The responses are categorized according to what assistance the senior citizen requires, along with their locality and flat number. Once I receive the response for assistance I assign the person with the volunteer of that locality to help with that task.”
He further added, “After I assign a volunteer to a senior citizen, the volunteer is provided with the information of that citizen such as name, locality, flat number, phone number and what assistance they require via email and WhatsApp. After the volunteer completes the task, the volunteer must send an email back to me informing me that their task has been completed so I can ensure that every task which has been requested has been completed and nobody is left without having their problem being resolved.”
Though the operation is still in its nascent stage, the impact of the initiative has already started to show results, “Within two days of running the website, we have got 25 volunteers assigned to almost 30 tasks. These number is increasing every day! Since the health of the volunteers is extremely crucial and we want to maintain as much social distancing as possible, we also have another page on our website which has links and phone numbers of pharmacies and grocery stores which deliver items to our locality, which also makes it easier for the volunteers.
Along with all of this, talking to the senior citizens and to trying to put a smile on their face makes me extremely happy. Many of these senior citizens stay alone as their families are staying abroad and to make their day even slightly better and make their life easier makes me feel amazing.”
Vir has plans to expand the base of operations and ensure that help can be given to as many people as possible in Gurugram by banking on the website, “Since this website is currently only for Hamilton Court, I have assigned the people to volunteers who had already been assigned to them with the system Hamilton Court previously had. Once this website starts expanding to neighboring condominiums, the senior citizens would be assigned to someone of their locality.”
In this time of crisis, it is heartening to see young people with such empathic thinking coming forward to help the elderly. It is important that all of us come together to help each other to not only battle the COVID pandemic, but also the effects of isolation that have been brought about by the national lockdown.
healthysoch
HealthySoch
